CHAPTER THREE

THE ACTIVE PARTICIPLE

A. PRELIMINARY DISCUSSION OF CONCEPTS AND ISSUES

The active participle in the Aramaic of the biblical book of Daniel has a wide range of functions, ranging from an aspectual progressive to an allegedly aspectless simple past, making it one of the most intriguing elements of the verbal system of this form of Aramaic. Kautzsch (1884:138-141) described the active participle as primarily a nominal form expressing a state, though he does give examples depicting actions in the past, present, or future, or serving as the complement of the verb . According to Bauer and Leander (1927:290-296) the active participle has partly taken over the functions of the prefix conjugation, and can function as present, future, or imperfective past. Its temporal relevance can be strengthened or highlighted by or a conjugated form of . In addition, the participle can also express the simple past. Rosén (1961) distinguished “linear” verbs from “point” verbs. For “point” verbs, the participle is the past time narrative tense, whereas for “linear” verbs, the participle denotes the present, and the compound tense containing , is both subordinative and future-volitive. According to Rosenthal (1961:55), the participle was used for expressing the “immediate present,” which led to its use for an “action that is simultaneous with the main action,” and its frequent use in past time eventually “led further to the free use of the participle as a narrative tense.” In addition, it was also used to express continuous and habitual action. Muraoka (1966:157-160) suggested that the participle in Biblical Aramaic is “more or less indifferent to time,” i.e., its temporal reference is determined by the context. That is, the participle may refer to the past, present, or future, depending on the context. Where the context does not specify a temporal reference, the participle is atemporal. Segert (1975:381-383) observed that this is also the case of the participle in Old Aramaic, but only in Daniel does it denote independent past time actions. Cohen (1984:393-432) proposed that the active participle has a durative function. By itself it expresses the durative present, and the addition of adds the tense, durative past with a suffix conjugation and 40 CHAPTER THREE durative future with the prefix conjugation . In discussing the distinction in the past time functions of the participle and the suffix conjugation, he allowed that the participle by itself can function as a historical present in narrative contexts (as suggested by Bauer and Leander 1927:294-295), but claimed that this use always follows a suffix conjugation verb (Cohen 1984:413, 477). According to Blau (1987:6-10), the participle, the prefix conjugation, and verbless clauses all mark simultaneity in past time after a suffix conjugation form or a temporal adverbial, “without visible functional difference,” and reflects the “blend of two systems,” “the earlier one with the imperfect and the later one with the participle.” Gzella (2004:306-308) listed the functions of the participle as present, performative, future, and narrative past. In contrast, the participle in combination with is an imperfective, i.e., with a suffix conjugation , it is the imperfective counterpart to the suffix conjugation, and with a prefix conjugation , it is the imperfective counterpart to the prefix conjugation or the participle by itself (Gzella 2004:308-309). Thus, although there is widespread agreement that the active participle can express the present as well as the past and the future, the nature of its function in these temporal spheres and the diachronic sequence in which these functions developed remain to be explored. Of special relevance to this study is the relationship between progressive and imperfective grammatical constructions. Progressive, sometimes also called “durative,” is a subset of imperfective aspect. According to Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca (1994:125-126), a progressive “views an action as ongoing at reference time,” whereas an imper- fective can express a wider range of meanings, including habitual, iterative, frequentative, etc., as well as ongoing actions. Progressives generally occur with dynamic rather than stative predicates. This is because a stative denotes a state that will continue indefinitely unless something puts an end to it, whereas a progressive denotes an action that continues because it is sustained by a constant input of energy. They offer the following two sentences as examples (126): 1. Sara is reading. 2. *Sara is knowing the answer. Sentence 1 contains a progressive construction with a dynamic verb. Sentence 2 uses a stative verb in a progressive construction, and is ungrammatical.